Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (83 page)

FENRIZ:
Deathcrush
was insanely inspirational. It could be bought on tape under the counter at Hot Records in Oslo in early 1987. The vinyl came out later that year. It was by far the rawest band in Norway. Just looking at the logo was godly. After I heard it, I got in touch with them, and even though I was a greenhorn they took some interest in me. I had my own crew to build in Darkthrone. So my contact with Euronymous and Necrobutcher between 1987 and 1990 was sporadic, but memorable. But there wasn’t a scene. Everyone was just pen pals, more or less. I think Mayhem showed a lot of us that we had to fend for ourselves, DIY-style.

SHAGRATH:
I really liked
Deathcrush
; it was so raw and heavy. It was Euronymous who introduced me to it. I wanted to buy it from him and I couldn’t. It was a limited edition—that’s before it was reprinted.

FROST:
Mayhem would say [1994’s]
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
was a much more important album, and of course it was. But to me,
Deathcrush
was really significant, and especially that saw blade guitar sound. It’s the first proper release by a really extreme Norwegian band, and that gave Mayhem cult status.

FAUST:
Many people were directly inspired to make riffs the same way as Euronymous did. For example, Snorre Ruch from Thorns was very inspired by it, and, in fact, he did it so well that his kind of riffing in turn inspired Euronymous again, and it eventually became the trademark riffing of what became known as Norwegian black metal. Today, Thorns is a well-kept secret from the more superficial black metal fans, and little do they probably realize that this loner from Trondheim influenced bands like Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir, Burzum, Emperor, and even Mayhem. I didn’t leave Thorns as such, but we more or less decided to put it down [in 1992] since Snorre joined Mayhem and I joined Emperor.

EURONYMOUS:
Most people hated us. It was something so raw and evil [that chills ran down your back], and you really got a kick from listening to it [if you were into black metal]. Now death metal is commercial, and bands like Cadaver have even played gigs for their parents. This is not good. This does not help the underground. Real death metal should be something normal people are afraid of, not something mothers listen to.

Darkthrone, launched under the name Black Death in 1986, evolved into one of the most influential bands in Norwegian black metal. Unlike some of their peers, the band began as a death metal group, as reflected in their 1991 debut,
Soulside Journey
. But it was 1992’s
A Blaze in the Northern Sky
that marked their transformation and became a landmark for the genre. Chilling and evil—and so tinny-sounding the songs seemed to be playing on damaged speakers—the music resonated with the lunatic conviction of a group dedicated to darkness and determined to sign a pact with the devil.

FENRIZ:
We started out as a band that [just]
tried
to play. Inspired by the primitive riffs of Celtic Frost and the [sloppiness] of [crossover punk band] Cryptic Slaughter, I thought, “I can start playing as well.” Then in the autumn of ’87 I formed Darkthrone and our sound developed into trying out anything, from Napalm Death’s crusty grind/punk with Celtic Frost riffs thrown in for good measure to softer, epic acoustic bits probably inspired by Metallica instrumentals. So we were a metal/punk band in ’87 and ’88, just as we have been since 2005. But in ’89 we turned into death-thrashers, and by the end of the year we were fully fledged technical horror death metal fiends with a record deal to match. I had been listening to death metal since I discovered Possessed as early as ’86, and in the underground, death metal riffs flourished. In those days, thrash, death, and black were often mixed together, as there were luckily no real niches yet. It was when death metal became streamlined that I didn’t feel it anymore. Plus we had been rediscovering blacker vibes since 1989, hearing our old Destruction albums, for instance, in a new way. And we were worshipping Bathory and Hellhammer combined with Motörhead and Black Sabbath. Of course, in 1990 we were a technical, evil death metal band, but this had to change. In early ’91 we decided to start rocking out the black metal vibes and tone down the slinky death metal stuff.

KORY GROW:
One reason Darkthrone is so important is because [1992’s]
A Blaze in the Northern Sky
was the first record that got across the whole idea of taking back Norway from the Christians. They were saying, “A thousand years ago you invaded Norway and you raped us of our religion and our culture. So why are we continuing to follow these rules that the English brought to us when they took so much from us?”

Darkthrone followed up
A Blaze in the Northern Sky
with two more harrowing and hellish black metal releases—1993’s
Under a Funeral Moon
and 1994’s
Transylvanian Hunger
—before Mayhem finally released the seminal follow-up to
Deathcrush: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
. That album’s creation was, to say the least, fraught with complications, including member shifts, suicide, and murder, which explains why it took six years to complete. Going into the project, Mayhem wanted a more dramatic front man than either of their former vocalists, Eirik Nordheim (aka Messiah) and Sven Erik Kristiansen (aka Maniac, who returned to the band between 1994 and 2004). So they recruited Per Yngve Ohlin (aka Dead), whose volatility and aesthetic made Mayhem’s performances visceral and terrifying. The band also replaced drummer Manheim with Jan Axel Blomberg (aka Hellhammer), who remains one of the genre’s fastest and most aggressive players.

NECROBUTCHER:
Dead really took his role in the band seriously. He buried his stage clothes in the ground so they would decompose and smell. He also collected dead squirrels and roadkill and kept them in this cooler bag without cooling elements, so the stench was very foul. He always took that in a plastic bag to gigs or to the studios, where he could open up the bag and smell it before he sang to get the right feeling of death.

JAN AXEL “HELLHAMMER” BLOMBERG (Mayhem):
I joined Mayhem in 1988. I took my name from Celtic Frost’s previous project Hellhammer, and I thought it was a shame that such a good name had to disappear. My friends introduced me to Euronymous and Dead. Soon after [I joined] we got into the dark side of life and Satanism. I would always like those things in spite of the fact that I was born in a Christian family. Only years after, I realized how weird and how harmful it was for us. But I was too young to resist my temptation for darkness. I found some books where different rituals were described. Later on, we put our knowledge into real life practice. Euronymous was the most deeply involved. He was our teacher. Now I realize he went too far. And Dead followed his lead. Frankly speaking, I didn’t completely understand Satanism. I was attracted by the dark, sinister imagery, but I didn’t feel any anger for Christianity. Euronymous and Dead hated it. “Christianity is evil,” they used to say. But I asked them: “Ain’t it evil what we are doing?” I never got an answer.

NECROBUTCHER:
One of the reasons we had dead animals onstage was because Dead liked that kind of image; it fit with his stage show. The first time we used it was in late ’88. I’d say 50 percent of the people at the show liked the visuals and thought it was cool—like performance art. The other 50 percent of the crowd were disgusted. But Dead always said he’d like to take it a step further. His dream was to play in Stockholm and slaughter a goat with a chainsaw onstage, but we never got to do that.

DEAD:
My mum told me when I was a baby I slept so deeply I turned white. She had to check me all the time to see if I was still alive. Maybe the whole thing started there? And maybe it started before that. My great-great-grandmother was a sorcerer but only practiced white magic. I have never been into fuckin’ white magic. I have always hated Christianity, and when I discovered Satanism I became insanely interested in that.

HELLHAMMER:
When Dead entered the show he just became Dead. I don’t know why he was cutting himself, but he did it a lot. He cut his arm so bad with a bottle once that he almost fainted onstage.

NECROBUTCHER:
For [Dead], the stage was the place where he could live out everything you couldn’t do in normal life. You don’t cut yourself when you’re in the supermarket. But when he performed he could really show off his bizarre ideas about this character, Dead. He was an antisocial guy, more into being alone and reading books and drawing. When we met, he was smiling. He had a great sense of humor, black humor that we shared. Other people didn’t know him. He didn’t open up easily, so people thought he was depressed. But he wasn’t at all. He just was not interested in interacting with new people, or listening to other people’s opinions.

HELLHAMMER:
In the beginning of the nineties we rented an old deserted house in the forest to rehearse. Everybody [in town] hated us, but we enjoyed it. Dead would lock himself in his room, permanently depressed. Euronymous and Dead didn’t get along. Dead didn’t trust Euronymous. The verbal fights turned into real bloody beatings. I got tired of their quarrels and moved to my grandmother’s, coming back mainly to rehearse. One day I decided to go to Oslo with my friends. Before the departure, I met Dead. He was grim and depressed: “Look, I bought a big knife. It’s very sharp.” Those were the last words I heard from him.

NECROBUTCHER:
We had a lot of plans, but things weren’t moving so fast. Tours were canceled, the songs for
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
were more or less finished, but we didn’t have a budget to enter the studio. We had some setbacks. On top of that, all of Dead’s friends were still in Sweden and that depressed him a little bit. And his family was constantly on him about the choices he had to make in his life, pushing him all the time to go back to school and get a real job. Ultimately, after living together for a while, he and Euronymous were no longer friends. Also, he was morbidly [obsessed with the] afterlife. All his lyrics were about this, and I think that came from an episode that happened to him when he was ten years old and he was ice skating and he fell on the ice. His [spleen] sprung open and he was rushed to the hospital, and then he had this vision. What he told me was that he was actually dead, but they got him back to life. And [while he was unconscious] he heard some music and saw a tunnel with a light at the end of it, and then when he found out that people had similar visions after near-death experiences he read all the books on the subject that he could get. He [felt that] there was an afterlife, and fuck anyone who didn’t believe in it. It was not religious; it was a spiritual thing. His solution [to proving there is an afterlife] was just to kill himself. So he did.

HELLHAMMER:
Euronymous was leaving with me that day. He went to town on some business for his label [Deathlike Silence Productions]. Several days later, when he came back, the house looked deserted. The front door was locked and there was no key in our secret place. Euronymous went round the house and noticed that the window to Dead’s room was opened. He got to the house and saw Dead lying on the floor: a part of his head was blown away by [a] gunshot. Euronymous hitchhiked to the nearest town to buy film for his camera. Then he returned and made a shot of Dead’s corpse. When Euronymous called me, he was not talkative. “Dead went back home,” he said. “Back to Sweden?” I wondered. “No, he’s blown his head [off].” Then I realized that Dead was dead. Police took Dead’s body, and we lived in the house for a few more weeks. Dead’s blood and pieces of his skull were all over the room. Once I looked under his bed and found two big pieces of skull. I took one piece and Euronymous took the other. We made amulets out of them.

EURONYMOUS:
Although I was the one who found him and had to crawl through his brains to get into his house, I don’t think it affected me very much. Of course, he was a friend, but I know he wanted to die, and the only right thing he could do was to give his life to the darkness. It would have been wrong to prevent him from doing it. Besides, when I say I’m into death metal, I mean it! I hate when people say that they’re into death, and when it comes down to it they’re really just life-loving, humanitarian false trendies. Of course I took photos—wouldn’t you? It’s not every day you get to mess around with a real corpse. Unfortunately.

NECROBUTCHER:
Øystein called me and said that Dead had done something cool. I said, “What’s up?” Euronymous said, “He blew his brains out,” and I said, “What the fuck?” He told me about the pictures [he had taken of Dead’s corpse], and I told him, “You burn those pictures before you even call me again. You’re sick in your head.” I was completely angry and knocked out by grief. When somebody close to you kills himself, that’s the worst grief you can have because it doesn’t explain anything. It’s almost like a betrayal. You start to think, “Was there something I could do, was it something I said?” When somebody dies in a car accident, you can accept, “Yeah, he was in a car, they came off of a road, hit a tree, it was sad—but it has an explanation.” This wasn’t like that. So I was full of grief and was the only one from the band who went to Sweden for the funeral. My dear brother, Euronymous—the guy I met when I was sixteen and was together with every day for ten years, sharing information, talking about plans—his reaction to Dead’s death was a betrayal to me, and I got very pissed off. He didn’t get rid of the pictures, and he took advantage of the situation because now he could be the leader of Mayhem.